Court upholds decision that the paper's 2010 statement was made with actual malice

A Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals judge has denied the Milford-Miami Advertiser's request to appeal a 2012 ruling that charged the Gannett-owned suburban weekly with defamation and ordered the paper to pay the defamed plaintiff $100,000 in damages.

In an article published in the Advertiser on May 27, 2010 titled "Cop's suspension called best move for city," the paper implicated Miami Township police officer James Young, who years before had been mired in legal trouble for accusations of sexual assault that were eventually disproven, in its article discussing another sex scandal in the area.

According to court documents, in 1997, Young was initially fired from his job after a woman named Marcie Phillips accused Young of forcing her to perform oral sex on him while Young was on duty. An internal investigation revealed that the two had actually been engaged in a relationship prior and that Young had spent time at Phillips' house while on duty.The allegations, however, were entangled in questions about Phillips' character and concern that she could have been lying about the rape because the relationship between the two had recently ended on rocky terms.

When DNA testing on semen found on a rug in the woman's home proved that the DNA didn't match Young's, he was exonerated and reinstated to his position.

The Advertiser article explained that Young had been terminated for sexual harassment, immoral behavior, gross misconduct and neglect in the line of duty and also stated that "Young had sex with a woman while on the job," which formed the basis for Young's defamation suit.

The 2010 article dealt with similar accusations lodged against Milford Police Officer Russell Kenney, who pleaded guilty to charges that he'd been having sex with Milford Mayor Amy Brewer while he was on duty on multiple occasions.

Kenney was suspended from his position for 15 days, but
was later reinstated even though Milford's police chief planned to
recommend his termination to avoid having to use an arbitrator to
dissect the case.

Although the article is attributed to writer Kellie Giest, the lawsuit revealed that the paper's editor at the time, Theresa Herron, inserted the section of the article that went to trial. According to court documents, Herron added the paragraphs about Young to Giest's story because she felt the article needed more context about why the city wanted to avoid arbitration.

According to court documents from the suit Young filed against the Gannett Satellite Information Network, Gannett responded the to initial complaint by acknowledging that the statement was a defamation of character, but that the statement was made without actual malice on the part of Herron. There is a high legal threshold for plaintiffs to establish a defamation claim, which require the plaintiff to prove several elements beyond a reasonable doubt; for public officials, the threshold is even higher because they most prove that the offender acted with actual malice — in this case, knowing the claim about Young was false and printing it anyway — to win a lawsuit.

In its appeal, Gannett argued that Young, as a police officer, did not meet the threshold of a public official required to successfully establish a defamation claim and that Herron's inclusions were based on rational interpretations of documents on the case — even though Young denied having sex with plaintiff Marcie Phillips, he admitted the two had kissed and the arbitrator's report documented one instance in which Young was at Phillips' house while on duty.

In the court's opinion denying Gannett's appeal, Judge John Rogers writes that Herron admitted she had read the arbitrator's report from Young's case, which provided no evidence that Young and Phillips ever actually had sex at all.

"There was sufficient evidence for the jury to conclude that Herron was well aware that the statement she added to the article was probably false," it reads. "Herron was also reckless in failing to conduct any investigation beyond the records of the original case. She did not seek out Young for comment, nor did she talk to anyone involved in his case."

Ohio energy provider FirstEnergy, who last June won a bid to provide Cincinnati with “100 percent green” aggregated energy, was fined $43.3 million yesterday by the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio for grossly overcharging its customers for renewable energy credits, or RECs. The issue dealt with FirstEnergy’s overcharging of customers across Northern Ohio from 2009-2011, so new FirstEnergy customers in Cincinnati are unaffected.

A Cincinnati spine doctor, Abubakar Atiq Durrani, accused of performing millions of dollars worth of unnecessary surgery on unsuspecting patients was indicted yesterday for five counts of health-care fraud and five counts of making false health-care claims.

Staff members of the Cleveland Scene yesterday snatched up the Twitter handle @PlainDealer after the Cleveland daily accidentally forgot to claim/reclaim it along with @ThePlainDealer. The Scene earned a delivered case of Great Lakes’ Oktoberfest and a six-pack of PBR in ransom.

Hamilton Country fares worse than Ohio overall when it comes to the economic well-being, health, education and safety of our children, according to a report released Aug. 7 by the Children's Defense Fund and Annie E. Casey Foundation. Although median income is higher in Hamilton County than the statewide median, our rates are worse in child povery, fourth-grade reading and math proficiency, felony convictions and the amount of babies with low birth weights, an early sign of bad health.

If you don't have anything nice to say about living in North Korea, you will get stuck working in a coal mine. Last week popular stand-up comedian Lee Choon Hong was sentenced to an indefinite period of hard labor in a COAL MINE after she told a bad joke that "satirized" aspects of North Korean society. She was apparently yanked off statge in the middle of her performance and sent straight to the mine without the chance to say goodbye to her family.

This week in news: The historic building that houses the Emery Theatre is threatened by controversy between the owners of the building, the two organizations that run it and the nonprofit group The Requiem Project, who was billed in 2008 to program the theatre and raise money for the its renovation.

Last week the Requiem Project sued the University of Cincinnati, which owns the building, Emery Center Corporation and Emery Center Apartments Limited Partnership (ECALP), for violating a "letter of intent" and attempting to forcefully evict Requiem from the building, although its leaders, Tara Gordon and Tina Manchise, say they've never been told why they've been "backed into a corner."

A public housing project in Paris is the subject of an experimental heating project through which the warmth generated by human bodies milling around a nearby Metro station will be used to heat the building.

This intern for NextMovie.com fucking cited every single line of Mean Girls by heart in less than 30 minutes.

Company overpriced renewable energy credits purchased from affiliate company

On Wednesday the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio unanimously ruled that Akron, Ohio-based energy supplier FirstEnergy Corp. must credit its Ohio customers $43.3 million for overcharging for renewable energy credits (RECs) from 2009-2011 that it purchased from its affiliate, FirstEnergy Solutions.

RECs are tradable, non-tangible energy credits that represent proof that one megawatt-hour (MWh) of electricity has been sourced from an eligible renewable energy resource. First Energy Solutions is an energy generator and supplier, while First Energy Corp. is an electricity distributor, which means that it sources its electricity from elsewhere, which requires them to issue bids seeking the most competitively priced energy from a supplier such as First Energy Solutions.

According to the First Energy Corp. website, First Energy Solutions is the competitive subsidiary of FirstEnergy Corp. Both suppliers are based in Akron. An audit conducted by Exeter Associates Inc. revealed that FirstEnergy Corp. paid 15 times more than any other company in the country to purchase the RECs from FirstEnergy Solutions, and FirstEnergy Corp. passed that overcharge onto consumers.

In a copy of the order issued yesterday by the PUC obtained by CityBeat, it states that, "The Companies contend that, given the nascent market, lack of market information available to the Companies, and uncertainty regarding future supply and prices, the Companies' decisions to purchase in-state RECs were reasonable and prudent."

In summary, FirstEnergy contends that because it was scrambling to find a way to meet the state's Clean Energy Law requirements, it had to buy these RECs no matter the cost, and that there are no legal specifications within the Clean Energy Law that requires RECs be purchased or sold at market price; and that the costs issued to them, and subsequently, customers, weren't unreasonable.

The Ohio Consumers Counsel, however, says that there were cheaper alternatives available and that FirstEnergy should have checked with the PUC prior to paying 15 times more for RECs than any other country had in the past. If they'd rejected the exorbitant bids, says OCC, and instead consulted with PUC and OCC, they could have come up with a solution to prevent from charging customers excessively high rates.

In June 2012, FirstEnergy Solutions was the winning bidder in Cincinnati's energy aggregation program, which is supposed to allow us to receive lower "aggregate" rates for buying in bulk. At the time, FirstEnergy touted the merits of its "100 percent green" energy supply, sourced from wind, solar, biomass and other renewable resources. The bid was expected to save homeowners around $133 annually.

What enabled FirstEnergy to provide the "clean" energy was its use of a system with non-tangible renewable energy credit (RECs) that each represent proof that one megawatt-hour (MWh) of electricity has been sources from a renewable energy resource.

Purchasing the credits from its subsidiary allows FirstEnergy Corp. to meet the state's renewable energy standard, which requires that by 2025 all Ohio utility companies provide at least 25 percent of their energy from renewable resources.

Because the lawsuit issued by the PUC examines only the amount paid for RECs during compliance periods between 2009 and 2011, Cincinnati customers who switched to FirstEnergy Solutions last June should not be affected, although the FirstEnergy arms' ambiguous behavior, says Dan Sawmiller, a Sierra Club member who manages Ohio's Beyond Coal campaign, is a likely indicator that the company may be engaging in other unethical practices related to consumer transparency.

The company has not been devoid of controversy in the past. In March, CityBeat reported on state environmental groups' concerns with the movement to lower requirements for defining renewable energy and energy efficiency; FirstEnergy was part of the bloc working to weaken Ohio's Clean Energy Law in hopes of keeping corporation costs low. FirstEnergy was also chastised by the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio in 2009 for distributing and charging customers for energy-efficient light bulbs without receiving customers' authorization.

Sawmiller commended the PUC for fining First Energy, although he suggests the fine is likely modest for the actual damages. He still expresses concern about the need for corporate separation between the two FirstEnergy arms. "The commission left much to be desired in terms of transparency, leaving customers in the dark about what types of renewables are being provided, where are they coming from and at what cost," says Sawmiller in Sierra Club's press release.

Media musings from Cincinnati and beyond

•I
hope Nelson Mandela is alive and healing when you read this. He’s an
old man with a persistent and probably lethal lung problem born from
decades in prison.

His
colleagues in the ANC are preparing the country for his death and the
news media are full of calls for prayer, admonitions against futile
hopes for recovery, and assurances that Mandela is getting the best care
possible without making him miserable and sicker.

If
he's died since I wrote this on Tuesday, he lived a life of dignity and
service. By example, he led South Africans of all races and ethnicities
into a post-apartheid era with good will and high, if unreal, hopes that
someday, the wrongs of apartheid might be erased.

For
more than 50 years, I’ve followed his career with an interest that few
others provoked. My active appreciation began during graduate school in
London where I prepared for a career in Africa. Mandela, Sisulu and
others were heroes of the anti-apartheid movement. Their efforts to end
violent, toxic white minority rule in South Africa was companion to the
growing momentum for independence in Europe’s African colonies,
protectorates and overseas provinces.

“Winds
of change” was shorthand for all of this but no one expected it to blow
away the racism and segregation of South African apartheid.

That so-called “separate development” of South Africa’s various racial
groups was even, then, anything but development. If anyone doubts it, look
at the generations impoverished by separate education and training and
how this burdens the aspirations of today’s black majority.

By
the time I reached Southern Africa in late 1963, Mandela and others were
on trial, accused of sabotage and conspiracy. Blacks, whites and
Indians, they were leaders of the armed wing of the African National
Congress. In plain words, they were revolutionaries. In mid-1964, all
were convicted and most were sentenced to life in prison. They could
have been executed. Mandela already was in prison, convicted of
illegally leaving (and re-entering) the country.

Our
weekly Zambia News and then daily Zambia Times — hundreds of miles to
the north — were able to report with freedom unknown in South Africa. We
benefited from the freest journalism in Southern Africa, including
Southern Rhodesia, Southwest Africa, and Portuguese Mozambique and
Angola.

When
Mandela dies, it’s going to be fascinating to see what obits and
commentaries focus on: terrorist, lawyer, prisoner, statesman, president
and like Cincinnatus, a leader who walked away from power.

•Tim
Funk, one of the best student journalists I was lucky enough to teach,
was arrested recently for not moving swiftly enough to please cops in
North Carolina.

The Charlotte Observer’s religion reporter, Tim was covering a local demonstration by local clergy at the state legislature in Raleigh.

Tim
is saying nothing, under orders from his bosses, until after his
mid-July court appearance. However, his paper said authorities claimed
Tim, “who covered the statehouse in the 1980s, failed to move away from a
crowd of about 60 that was demonstrating and peacefully surrendering to
arrest.” He “was handcuffed and taken along with the arrested
protesters to the Wake County magistrate’s office to be arraigned on
misdemeanor charges of trespassing and failure to disperse.

“Jeff
Weaver, police chief for the General Assembly Police in Raleigh who
oversaw the arrests, told The Associated Press that Funk did not heed a
warning from officers to disperse before the arrests began.” The paper
said Tim was released late that same night.

“We
believe there was no reason to detain him,” said Cheryl Carpenter,
Observer managing editor. “He wasn’t there to do anything but report the
story, to talk to Charlotte clergy. He was doing his job in a public
place.”

One
online reader commented that it probably was no accident that Tim was
among the first arrested; that assured he could not report how police
dealt with demonstrating clergy. Readers also noted how zealous police
tested federal constitutional guarantees with their orders to disperse:
freedom to assemble and petition government and freedom of the press.

•A
2012 survey of almost 900 American TV journalists found roughly 20 percent
showing signs of burnout and uncertainty whether they will remain in the
industry.

Scott
Reinardy, associate professor of journalism at the University of
Kansas, said TV news staffs increased by 4 percent, revenue was up, and
stations were producing more content than ever before, often as much as 5
1/2 hours more per day. “I wanted to see how all of that played into
burnout,” Reinardy said.

The
KU press office reported his study. He said that questions about
exhaustion, cynicism and professional efficacy found that respondents
who reported higher levels of exhaustion also reported lower levels of
organizational support, while those who reported higher levels of
professional efficacy — or satisfaction in their jobs — reported higher
levels of organizational support.

Reinardy
reported that 81 percent of his respondents said they work differently “than a
few years ago.” Many have increased social media responsibilities, are
expected to produce content for multiple platforms and have more
frequent deadlines.

“Many
said, ‘I can’t do this much longer,’” Reinardy said. “You’re probably
going to see the TV business get younger, a little more inexperienced
and, as a result, there will be a loss of institutional knowledge, which
doesn’t bode well for community journalism at any level.”

•I’m
waiting for conservative pundits to wonder aloud how Republicans can
tell us to trust the National Security Agency while assuring us, "Government
is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." I guess
it’s the same mental gymnastics that reporters find when legislators
kill money for family planning and do all they can to assure that
low-income women can’t get abortions.

•A good sex scandal ages well even if protagonists don’t.

In the early 1960s, party girl Christine
Keeler almost brought down the British government. She shared beds of
British Secretary of State for War John Profumo and a Soviet spy, naval
office Yevgeny Ivanov.

At
the time, there were public assurances all around that her activities
were sexual, not Cold War espionage; pillow talk was erotic, not
nuclear.

Now, the London Daily Mail says Keeler’s new book includes her admission that she helped
her friend, society osteopath Stephen Ward uncover secrets about
missile movements in the West that were later passed to the Soviets.

“However I dress it up, I was a spy and I am not proud of it. The truth is that I betrayed my country.”

The
Sunday Mirror also quotes Keeler as saying, “The Establishment was far
more interested in painting it as a sex scandal and chose to ignore
claims of a widespread spying network. Far better that the Establishment
be caught with its pants down than involved in stealing secrets. That
was the thinking.”

Osteopath
Ward, who introduced young women to rich and powerful men, often at
country houses, committed suicide as he became the scapegoat in the
scandal.

I
was at UPI in London at the time. Keeler is right. There was a
political/aristocratic Establishment and its first concern was its own
survival. For months, we treaded lightly as we reported seemingly
unrelated events without connecting them in fear of ferocious, costly
libel laws.

But
the unreported stories we heard and traded proved to be less salacious
than the facts as they came out. Profumo probably would have escaped
with modest embarrassment had he not been caught lying to the House of
Parliament about the affair. That breach of the Establishment’s
expectations of a Gentleman, and not widely held suspicions of Soviet
espionage, brought him down.

•Tuesday’s
Morning Edition on NPR included the kind of remark that fuels
conservative conviction that public network is a coven of Lefties. The
host was asking a foreign reporter about the different responses of
Turkish and Brazilian leaders to ongoing street protests. After the
reporter offered the political context for the seemingly accommodating
reaction of the Brazilian president, the host suggested that the Turkish
prime minister hadn’t responded to young protesters there. First, the
host was wrong. He responded. Second, it was obvious that the Turk’s
response wasn’t acceptable to the NPR host because it was hardline
rather than accommodating.

Media musings from Cincinnati and beyond

•The Enquirer’s MasonBuzz.com
wasn’t honest with readers about the source of its story promoting
“National Heimlich Maneuver Day.” It was posted by a reporter but
carried the byline of Melinda Zemper. She’s not a reporter and she
wasn’t identified as a “contributor.” Zemper is public relations
professional whose clients include Heimlich interests. She was helpful
when I sought out Phil Heimlich for a story recently. That’s her job. So
is providing copy ready for publication. With so few reporters and
editors, news media are evermore open to such PR material as “news.”
Traditional journalism ethics requires that we be told the writer’s
underlying interest in the story if it’s not by a reporter or
contributor. MasonBuzz.com failed that test.

•London’s
Guardian scored its first of two coups when it reported the Obama
administration is collecting our cell phone records in the name of
national security. The Washington Post followed with its story about
spying through Internet sites such as Google. Both relied on the same
source, one of thousands of private contractor employees with top
security clearances.

•The Guardian’s second coup was its interview with the American who revealed that NSA cell phone tracking: Edward Snowden, 29. The Guardian called him a “former technical assistant for the CIA
and current employee of the defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton.
Snowden has been working at the National Security Agency for the last
four years as an employee of various outside contractors, including Booz
Allen and Dell.”

The
paper said it named Snowden and published his online video statement at
his request. From the moment he decided to disclose numerous top-secret
documents to the public, the paper said, Snowden eschewed the protection
of anonymity.

"I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong," he told the Guardian, although he
wants to avoid the media spotlight. "I don't want public attention
because I don't want the story to be about me. I want it to be about
what the US government is doing." That won’t be easy, he conceded. "I know the media likes to personalise political debates, and I know the government will demonise me."

Still,
he told the Guardian, "I really want the focus to be on these documents
and the debate which I hope this will trigger among citizens around the
globe about what kind of world we want to live in ... My sole motive
is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that
which is done against them."

•Whistleblower Snowden
is the civilian version of Army Private Bradley Manning, who gave
military and diplomatic cables to Wikileaks. Both were low-level
intelligence specialists with high-level security clearance. Both claim
to have acted according to conscience, hoping to save rather than harm
our nation. There is a difference, however, that I haven’t seen or heard
in facile news media comparisons of Snowden to Manning or Daniel
Ellsberg, an academic defense analyst who revealed the Pentagon Papers.
Manning’s military and diplomatic cables and Ellsberg’s study of the
Vietnam war were in the broadest sense histories. Snowden’s revelations
involve current and future data collection and analysis.

•Mother
Jones magazine/online also scored two scoops in recent days. It says
the Justice Department wants to hide an 86-page opinion by the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Court that says the government
violated the spirit of federal surveillance laws and engaged in
unconstitutional spying. Mother Jones’ bureau chief in Washington, David
Corn, says the secrecy effort is a response to a Freedom of Information
suit by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

•In
its second coup, Mother Jones says the FBI raided the Winchester, Ky.,
home of corporate cybersecurity consultant Deric Lostutter. As hacker
KYAnonymous, he was instrumental in making the Steubenville rape case a
national story. Mother Jones says Lostutter “obtained and published
tweets and Instagram photos in which other team members had joked about
the incident and belittled the victim. He now admits to being the man
behind the mask in a videoposted by another hacker on the team's fan page, RollRedRoll.com,
where he threatened action against the players unless they apologized
to the girl ... According to the FBI's search warrant, agents were
seeking evidence related to the hacking of RollRedRoll.com ... If convicted of hacking-related crimes, Lostutter could face up
to 10 years behind bars — far more than the one- and two-year sentences
doled out to the Steubenville rapists.”

•Local
news media embrace an uncritical “boost, don’t knock” approach to local
festivals. Even so, they ignored a great photo op at the opening of
Summer Fair. Hundreds of people stood in line in the Coney Island
parking lot while two people — at one table — took admission money. Some
people waited more than 30 minutes to get in. Parking was free, so no
one knows how many potential customers took one look and drove away.

•A
recent Enquirer cover story confirms what a lot of people have known for
years: Go elsewhere for sophisticated cancer care. What’s news is the
admission in a proposed UC major investment to bring advanced cancer
care here.

•Another
Enquirer cover story made my prehensile toes curl with joy. The
Creation Museum is evolving to allow us to return to tree tops ...
via zip lines.

•I’m
still unhappy about NPR’s decision to kill Talk of the Nation carried
here 2-4 p.m. Monday-Thursday. It was the nation’s best long-format
public radio interview program, sort of a New Yorker of the air.

Starting
July 1, WVXU plans to fill the newly vacant 2-3 p.m. gap with an
expanded Cincinnati Edition using current staff as hosts. I hope it
retains long-format interviews.

With
its limited resources newly devoted to the expanded Monday-Thursday
Cincinnati Edition, WVXU is ending Maryanne Zeleznik’s Thursday morning
long-format Impact Cincinnati interview show and the staff’s Saturday
and Sunday one-hour weekend Cincinnati Edition. There were good regular
segments and I hope they’ll be woven into the new format.

To fill 3-4 p.m. Monday-Thursday, WVXU is bringing in The Takeaway. WVXU says it’s
is a co-production of WNYC Radio and Public Radio International, in
collaboration with New York Times Radio and WGBH Boston. The Takeawaycarries the tagline, “Welcome to the American Conversation.” We’ll see. Talk of the Nation set a very high standard.

•Sunday’s
Enquirer Forum calls on Ohio to expand Medicaid despite a shortage of
physicians and others to cope. In part, the paper notes, few med school
grads choose primary care. Reasons aren’t that complicated. Relatively
low salaries paid to primary care physicians mean docs will spend a good
portion of their adult lives repaying loans that often began as
undergrads and compounded while adding med school loans. Another reason
is that Medicaid pays even less than Medicare for office visits and
treatments. That’s helps explain why primary care docs aren’t better
paid and some practices limit their Medicaid and Medicare patients.

The
Enquirer should dig still deeper into related issues. Why should
taxpayers provide health insurance (Medicaid or unpaid emergency care)
to badly paid workers whose major employers provide little or no health
care insurance? Why do we as a nation offer such niggardly support to
med students that they opt for higher paid specialties which ease loan
repayments? (This isn’t a personal beef. Our daughter, whose board
certifications include family practice, went through medical school on a
UC scholarship but many classmates graduated with life-limiting debt.)

•NPR
had a long story on how jelly fish are multiplying at a rate that
creates or exacerbates problems in the oceans. These prehistoric
creatures survive, multiply and prosper without a spine or brain. Apt
analogies encouraged.

•The
cascade of information about NSA snooping has an unintended benefit.
Pervasive federal intrusions no longer are “just a journalists’ thing.”
Millions of Americans now know their cell phone calls and email/Internet
data are being collected and analyzed by NSA computers and agents. This growing consciousness may provoke a groundswell that could provide
brains and spine for Congress to correct police state legislation passed
after 9/11.

•Eric
Holder — still U.S. attorney general when this was written — is almost
contrite about Justice Department grabbing reporters’ telephone and
email records. He now says he won’t prosecute reporters just doing our
jobs. Any journalist who accepts
his assurance lacks the minimum skepticism required for our trade.
Holder serves at the pleasure of a president whose antipathy to leaks
recalls Nixon’s creation of the Plumbers.

•NKU
dropout Gary Webb shared the Pulitzer Prize in 1990 for San Jose
Mercury’s coverage of the Loma Prieta earthquake. Then he took on the
CIA in his sometimes-overreaching 1996 Mercury series, Dark Alliance,
which said crack cocaine was being sold in Los Angeles’ black ghettos to
support CIA-supported contras in Nicaragua. The LA Times and others —
including the NYTimes and Washington Post — were embarrassed by Webb and
the nowhere San Jose paper. They went all out to discredit Webb and his
findings. Webb’s errors and inadequately supported assertions gave
critics their opening. Irrespective of the the national papers’ attacks
inaccuracies and misdirection, they ruined Webb’s career and he
committed suicide. Years later, even former critics acknowledged the
generally substantiated core of Webb’s series: CIA ignored Contra
cocaine smuggling and its spread of crack in U.S. inner cities. A movie
is being made about Webb and the CIA series, Kill the Messenger.

•NPR’s
Morning Edition described in broad detail an NSA data center going up
outside Salt Lake City. Computers are so large and hot that they will
need 1.5 million gallons of cooling water daily. I wish NPR told me
where that water was coming from and where it would go after being used
to cool the computers.

•With friends like this ... Aljazeera.com
reports that Syrian rebels executed a 15-year-old Aleppo coffee vendor
in front of his family because the killers thought a common Syrian
retort was blasphemy. The youth apparently refused someone coffee on
credit, saying, “Even if Mohammad comes down, I will not give it as a
debt.”

•Obama’s
meeting at Sunnylands, the Annenberg estate near Palm Springs, Calif.,
pricked my nostalgia. In the early 1940s, my father, an Army physician,
was stationed in Palm Springs. A visionary local developer offered Dad
some land. As our family legend goes, that friend assured my father that
“after the war,” Palm Springs would boom. Headed for combat in Europe
and uncertain what might follow, Dad said thanks, but no thanks. Oh,
well. If Dad had taken his friend’s offer, last week’s Obama-Xi meeting
could have been on a Kaufman desert hideaway, “10,000 Lakes.”

Repeated discrimination in local Catholic Church takes spotlight

The Catholic Archdiocese of Cincinnati has been mired in quite a bit of trouble over the past several years for its morally outdated (and unjust) policies, and now one of the allegations has reached the courts. Today marked the second day of juror hearings in a schoolteacher's lawsuit against the Archdiocese and the two schools from which she was fired for violating her civil rights.

In 2010, schoolteacher Christa Dias, a single, non-ministerial employee at both Holy Family and St. Lawrence Schools, parochial schools owned and operated by the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, became pregnant via artificial insemination. At five and a half months pregnant, she asked her employers for something millions of U.S. women ask for every year: maternity leave.

She got more than she bargained for, though, when her employers fired her, assuming Dias had engaged in premarital sex (one of the many "moral" no-nos in the Catholic Church — for women, at least). She was informed that she was let go because she'd violated a moral clause in the Catholic doctrine that she'd agreed to adhere to when she signed her employment contract, which, in the eyes of the Catholic Church, makes it okay to discriminate when the discrimination falls under something called "ministerial exception" — a pesky and vague part of civil labor laws exempting religious policies from some basic rules for equality in the workplace.

Ergo: Women who are fired by the Catholic Church for getting pregnant face unfair discrimination because men aren't held to the same standard. Obviously, it's impossible to detect whether or not single male employees are engaging in premarital sex (but they probably are). The basis of Dias' lawsuit is that that little gender caveat is an inherent for of discrimination against women because women and men aren't held to the same moral standards.

Although her employers originally told her she was fired for premarital sex, they later retracted that assertion and said that the use of artificial insemination was immoral, also a violation of the Catholic doctrine.

According to the AP, Dias today told jurors she didn't realize that artificial insemination was a violation of church doctrine or that having the procedure could get her fired. The archdiocese's attorney, Steve Goodin, says that Dias was not discriminated against because she signed a contract that clearly commanded she abide by the Catholic doctrine.

CityBeat reported on a similar case of discrimination by the Catholic Church earlier this year ("Unforgiven Offenses," issue of Jan. 9, 2013), which detailed a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court of Southern Ohio by former schoolteacher Kathleen Quinlan, who was also fired from her non-ministerial position at Ascension Catholic School in Kettering, Ohio, in December 2011 after she approached her principal, told him about her pregnancy and offered to work behind-the-scenes until she gave birth.

Again, her employers and the Archdiocese used the "morality clause" to defend their position.

And then there was Johnathan Zeng ("Gays, Even Christians, Need Not Apply," issue of June 13, 2012), who was offered a job as a music teacher at Cincinnati Hills Christian Academy (CHCA) Armleder School after two weeks of discussions; Zeng even put on a teacher demonstration in front of a third grade class. When a board representative asked him point-blank if he was gay, Zeng told the truth: yes, he was gay. All of a sudden, Zeng was out of the running, even though he was already pinpointed as the most qualified applicant.

Some local Catholics, at least, are firing back against the archdiocese's archaic policies; recently, Debra Meyers was ordained as Cincinnati's first female Catholic priest by the Association of Roman Woman Catholic Priests, despite opposition from local Catholic leaders and the Vatican.Read our interview with her here.

Media musings from Cincinnati and beyond

•In a
disturbing decision, public radio’s Radiolab (WVXU-FM 8 p.m. Sundays)
gave Cincinnatian Phil Heimlich critical control over its March 5
program on Phil’s dad, Henry Heimlich.

Phil
arranged the interview with the aging physician, for whom the Heimlich
Maneuver is named. However, producer Pat Walters had to promise to
exclude the voice of Phil’s estranged younger brother, Peter, from any
subsequent broadcast.

Peter is a scathing critic of their father’s therapeutic claims for the Maneuver and more recent medical experiments.

Phil
told Curmudgeon that he feared Walters would ask their father about the
troubled family relationships. “Like any son, I’m somewhat protective
of him,” Phil said. “He’s 93 . . . We don’t let just anybody come up and
interview him.”

Peter told Curmudgeon that he was unaware of this bargain when he cooperated with Walters for the Radiolab story.

I
have no trouble with Phil’s setting conditions for arranging the
interview. My beef is with Radiolab. It could have refused. Similarly,
I’m not going into Heimlich’s therapeutic theories and claims; I’m
writing about Radiolab’s handling of the story.

I’m
troubled by Radiolab’s willingness to silence an important critic and a
source of its information in exchange for access to the elder Heimlich.
Further, if Walters failed to tell Peter about his deal with Phil,
that’s unethical, especially since Walters told Peter, “I want you to
speak for yourself.”

Peter
elaborated in a recent email to Curmudgeon: “I was first approached by
Radiolab last August when they asked to interview me for broadcast. I
wasn't informed that, five months earlier, they'd cut the censorship
deal, so they obtained my interview under false pretenses. Further, in
the following months, Radiolab producer Pat Walters took up hours of my
time, encouraging me to provide him with information and documents. I
only learned about the censorship deal a couple weeks ago, when the
program disclosed it on their website. If I'd known that Radiolab was
this underhanded, I wouldn't have given them a minute of my time -- and
I'd encourage other sources to keep their distance.”

Over the years, Peter has dealt with lots of reporters. I asked, "Have you encountered this kind of deal before?"

Peter responded, “I've never heard of a deal like this . . . and how many other Radiolab stories have included deals like this?”

Radiolab’s
website includes a link to the 25-minute program, including the
interview with Heimlich. Radiolab’s website text says:

“In
the 1970s, choking became national news: thousands were choking to
death, leading to more accidental deaths than guns. Nobody knew what to
do. Until a man named Henry Heimlich came along with a big idea. Since
then, thousands and thousands — maybe even millions — have been
rescued by the Heimlich maneuver. Yet the story of the man who invented
it may not have such a happy ending.

“Producer
Pat Walters wouldn't be here without the Heimlich maneuver — it saved
his life when he was just 11 years old. And one day he started wondering
- who was Heimlich, anyway? And how did he come up with his choking
remedy? Pat had always kinda assumed Heimlich died in the mid-1800s. Not
so. The man is very much alive: he's 93 years old, and calls
Cincinnati, Ohio, home.”

Given
the conflict of interest, letting choking survivor Walters do the
interview was a mistake. Here are the guts of Radiolab’s online
Producer’s Note:

“We made some minor changes to this story that do not alter the substance.

“(W)e
removed the audio of Peter Heimlich, Henry Heimlich’s son, from the
version now on the site. When we approached Henry’s other son Phil to
arrange an interview with his father, one of Phil’s conditions was that
we not air audio of Peter. We thought he’d waived that provision in a
subsequent conversation but he contends he did not. So we are honoring
the original request.”

The
version available online begins with a light-hearted exchange among
Radiolab personalities in their WNYC studio of New York Public Radio.
The conversation between Walters and Henry Heimlich at Heimlich’s home
maintains that chummy tone.

Then
Walters shifts to controversies over Heimlich’s Maneuver to resuscitate
drowning victims and other medical theories. Walters also interviews
experts who disagree with Heimlich. When Walters lets Heimlich speak
for himself, the physician accuses critics of jealousy and
self-interest.

Walters
lets the American Red Cross explain why it (quietly) abandoned decades
of support for the Maneuver as the first response to choking and
returned common backslaps.

“Nonsense,” Heimlich responded.

The
Red Cross also abandoned Heimlich’s name for its maneuver. Now, it’s
“abdominal thrusts.” Heimlich says abdominal thrusts are not the same as
his Maneuver and he’s offended by the whole affair.

Peter — who provided emails from which I worked — continues to press Radiolab
on its decision to erase his voice from its broadcast. Its latest
response refers him to the program’s original online statements.

•Stunning,
avoidable reporting mistakes followed the Boston Marathon bombing. They
began when the New York Post said a Saudi man was hospitalized, under
guardand might be a bomber. Days later, as the hunt ended, CNN said
the captured younger suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, was driven away by
police. CNN said Tsarnaev was not wounded or his wounds were so slight
that no ambulance was required. Wrong. He left in an ambulance; his
wounds were so serious that it was unclear when he would speak to
interrogators or appear in court.

•Was
there a gun battle after a Watertown resident saw the wounded man in
his boat and called police? Some media say no gun was found or the
19-year-old didn’t shoot.

•Speaking of mistakes, Businessinsider.com
described another blunder when reporters didn’t name sources or verify
leaks. “According to a source at CNN, the network was the first to
report that a suspect had been identified. Anchor John King sent in a
report around 1 p.m. that a source ‘briefed’ on the investigation had
told King a positive identification had been made. CNN Washington bureau
chief Sam Feist approved that report, according to the source.

“According
to the source, who was reviewing internal email logs, Fran Townsend was
the first at the network to say that an arrest had been made. ‘As I
think everyone knows, we really fucked up. No way around it,’ the source
said.

“The
source said that the network's email network went quiet for a 15-minute
period shortly after the retraction — ‘so people [were] either being
more cautious or getting yelled at.’

“Townsend's
report came around the same time as other outlets, including the
Associated Press and the Boston Globe, also reported an arrest, so it is
not clear whether CNN was the first to make the mistake . . .
Wednesday's false arrest reports also drew a scathing rebuke from the FBI,
which urged the press ‘to exercise caution and attempt to verify
information through appropriate official channels before reporting’."

This
is shabby journalism. CNN went with a report attributed to someone who
had been briefed by someone who knew something. No names. No
identifiable links to investigation. Simply assertions. We could have
waited until CNN verified or debunked the report but editors fear that
hesitation can drive viewers to other, less scrupulous sources. At least
Businessinsider.com appeared accurate in its use of its unnamed CNN sources.

•Social
media — better called anti-social media in the aftermath of the
marathon bombings - spread so much misinformation and falsely accused so
many young men that the FBI had to release images of its suspects: the Tsarnaev brothers. It was the only way to protect wrongly accused men
from vigilante justice, even though the suspects might be following the
chase on their cellphones.

•London’s Daily Mail reported some inadvertent humor among the errors:

Boston’s
Fox 4 scrolled across the bottom of the screen that the suspect sought
in Watertown was “19-year-old Zooey Deschanel.” Alerted to her new and
unwanted celebrity, Uproxx.com said, the 33-year-old star of the Fox sitcom, New Girl, tweeted, “Whoa! Epic closed captioning FAIL!”

Gawker.com
said NBC anchor Brian Williams cut to New England Cable News for an
update on the Watertown chase and listeners heard an unnamed reporter, “Oh, you’re not listening? Well, I don’t know shit.”

•It’s no surprise that Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post was unmatched for sheer bloodymindedness. Here’s the HuffingtonPost.com summary:

The
Post said 12 people had died, when only three had; it said a Saudi man
was a “suspect” in “custody” when he wasn't; and it splashed pictures of
two young “BAG MEN” on its front page even though it did not know
whether they were suspects. They were innocent. One was 17 years old; he
told the Associated Press that he was “scared to go outside.” And that
doesn’t include Post doctoring the photo of an injured spectator to hide
her leg wound.

Rather than apologize, Murdoch blamed others outside the Post.

•Murdoch’s Post wasn’t alone in falsely accusing men of being bombers. The LA Times said “Reddit is apologizing for its role in fueling the social media witch hunts for the Boston bombings
suspects. The social news website . . . became a place for amateur
sleuths to gather and share their conspiracy theories and other ideas on
who may have committed the crimes. The online witch hunts ended up
dragging in several innocent people, including Sunil Tripathi, a
22-year-old Brown University student who went missing last month (and
has since been found dead).

“After viewing the FBI's
photos of the suspects Thursday, Redditors became convinced that
Tripathi was one of the bombers, with countless posts gleefully pointing
out the physical similarities between Tripathi and Suspect No. 2, who
ended up being 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. The
growing wave of suspicion surrounding Tripathi led his family to
release a statement the next day saying they knew ‘unequivocally’ that
their son was not involved.

“On
Monday, Reddit General Manager Erik Martin posted a lengthy apology on
the site, saying the crisis ‘showed the best and worst of Reddit's
potential.’ He said the company, as well as several Reddit users and
moderators, had apologized privately to Tripathi's family and wanted ‘to
take this opportunity to apologize publicly for the pain they have had
to endure. We all need to look at what happened and make sure that in
the future we do everything we can to help and not hinder crisis
situations,’ the post said. ‘Some of the activity on Reddit fueled
online witch hunts and dangerous speculation which spiraled into very
negative consequences for innocent parties. The Reddit staff and the
millions of people on Reddit around the world deeply regret that this
happened’."

Reddit
said it does not allow personal information on the site in order to
protect innocent people from being incorrectly identified and
"disrupting or ruining their lives," according to the LA Times. "We
hoped that the crowdsourced search for new information would not spark
exactly this type of witch hunt. We were wrong," Reddit’s Martin
continued. "The search for the bombers bore less resemblance to the
types of vindictive Internet witch hunts our no-personal-information
rule was originally written for, but the outcome was no different."

The
LA Times added valuable context to what followed the bombings: they “were
the first major terrorist attack on American soil in the age of
Facebook, Twitter
and Reddit. But the watershed moment for social media quickly spiraled
out of control as legions of Web sleuths cast suspicion on the innocent,
shared bad tips and heightened the sense of panic and paranoia.” The
LA Times added that Boston police asked “overeager” Twitter users to
limit what they posted because that overly detailed tweets could
compromise officers' position and safety.

•Detroit
Free Press editors published a detailed online illustration of how to
make a pressure cooker bomb, like that reportedly used by the Boston
bombers. When their brain fart passed, they took down the instructions
and images. Of course, now, anyone can turn to Jimromenesko.com screen shot of the Detroit Free Press illustration . . .

•Newcomers
to the Tri-State puzzle over the lifelong identification with high/prep
school. When a Cincinnatian was involved in the emergency surgical
response to the Boston Marathon bombings, the Enquirer noted he went to
St. X. Only later did Our Sole Surviving Daily tell us he was graduated
from UC’s medical school before going off to Boston for his surgical
residency.

Two-year anniversary prompts inclusion of city of Cincinnati, three more CPD officers

Today marks the two-year anniversary of the death of David “Bones” Hebert, the gangly, inked vagabond, crafty burrito-maker, Punk rocker and rascal whose life ended abruptly one night in Northside, when Cincinnati Police Sergeant Andrew Mitchell fired two rounds into Bones’ thin frame.

Bones, who was described by his army of acquaintances as peaceful and thoughtful, left behind a legacy that sparked his friends to form Friends of Bones, a collective formed in response to his fatal police shooting, whose goal is “to support those directly involved in the case, to raise awareness about police violence in our community, and to bring about policy change in police procedures, training, and equipment, while encouraging responsible city leadership.”

That spurred the estate of David Paul Hebert to file a wrongful death lawsuit against Sergeant Mitchell on April 18, 2012, a year after the shooting. According to a press release from Paul Carmack, executor of the Hebert estate, the lawsuit today has been expanded to include the city of Cincinnati alleging Monell Claims (referring to municipal officials unconstitutionally or incorrectly dealing with a police misconduct claim) as well as Cincinnati Police officers Lawrence Johnson, Brian Kneller and Nicolino Stavale, for contributing to an atmosphere of danger. (See the expanded lawsuit in its entirety here.)

Bones was walking his dog, Shady, with a female friend around 3 a.m. the night of his death. Minutes before, a new acquaintance of Bones, Jason Weller, called 911 to report a man described as Bones to have recently stolen a pirate sword from his apartment, leaving Weller bloodied and alone. Although several of his friends admit he was inclined toward rowdy and wreckless behavior when he was intoxicated, but not violent.

Shortly after police stopped Bones and took his official statement, the police report alleges, “Mr. Hebert pulled a 13-inch switchblade knife with a six-inch blade from his pocket, raised his arm, and made a swiping motion with the knife at one of the officers. Sergeant Andrew Mitchell, who was serving as cover officer, drew his firearm as Mr. Hebert turned and stepped toward another officer. Sergeant Mitchell discharged two rounds from his Department-issued firearm, striking Mr. Hebert in left shoulder and left upper chest with both rounds.”

Bones was pronounced dead at the scene, and a toxicology report showed he had a blood alcohol level of .33 and traces of psychedelic mushrooms and marijuana. The investigations following his death — all of which exonerated Mitchell and the Police Department from any fault — brought to light a slew of inconsistencies, including conflicting statements from the officers involved, details about where Bones' knife was ultimately found and discrepancies in Weller's story, all of which form a basis for the current lawsuit. Videos retrieved from a Officer Dawson's cruiser cam also show that officers stood by idly, failing to offer any sort of assistance of resuscitation to Bones, seen here (at the 0:04 second mark, it appears Officer Mitchell kicks Bones' arm to check for consciousness).

Officer Mitchell in 2008 was involved in another police misconduct allegation after the "Bauer Tasing," when he tased an oblivious teenager from his moving police car without any warning or communication. Christopher Bauer, the teen walking home with his hands in his pockets and listening to his iPod, fell forward onto his face, suffering substantial injury.

In the past, Friends of Bones have held fundraisers and community events (often music-oriented, for Bones) to raise awareness about the case and garner support.

A city spokesperson directed CityBeat's inquiry about the expanded lawsuit to the city's law department, which as of Thursday afternoon had not returned a voicemail. This story will be updated if the city provides a response.According to court documents, the case will go before a jury Nov. 11.

Media musings from Cincinnati and beyond

Amanda
VanBenschoten’s reporting on both sides of the river has won her the
new position of Northern Kentucky news columnist at the Enquirer. We’ve
been friends since she was an undergrad in my ethics class. I had the
pleasure of holding up a copy of the NKU’s paper, The Northerner, and
showing our class her first page 1 byline. She was editor of NKU’s
paper, The Northerner, and worked for a Northern Kentucky weekly where
she regularly broke stories ahead of daily reporters. I warned the
then-editor of the Kentucky Enquirer to follow Amanda’s work because,
“she’ll eat your lunch.” Soon after, that wise editor hired Amanda. I’m looking forward to Amanda finding her own voice after years of
quoting others.

Scott
Aiken died this month. We’ve been colleagues and friends for more than
four decades. My wife and I moved to Cincinnati in 1967 and subscribed
to the Enquirer. I called Scott to compliment the analyses of foreign
events for which he’d been hired on the Enquirer editorial page. After
swapping tales about our work overseas and people we knew there, he
offered to introduce me to Bob Harrod, the local editor, who hired me
for weekend reporting. It was the perfect antidote to grad school. That
began 30-plus years at the Enquirer for me. Scott and I stayed in touch
after he left daily journalism for corporate public relations. Our
friendship survived my reporting of accusations of illegal wiretapping
by Cincinnati Bell; Scott was head of the telephone company’s public
relations. Our last lunch shared stories of his and Anne’s visit to
Rome. Sheila McLaughlin’s obit on March 9 covers his career admirably,
including Scott’s accidental matchmaking for a young
reporter/colleague.

• Urbi et orbi.
Accusations of omission and commission by Pope Francis when he was a
priest and Jesuit leader during Argentina’s murderous “Dirty War”
demonstrate how religious leaders risk charges of collaboration when a
dictatorship falls. Recent examples taint the Russian Orthodox Church
and South Africa’s Dutch Reform Church. But it’s a rare priest who rises
to the modern papacy without the historians, news media and others
questioning their careers. Pius XII is accused of being too close to
Nazi Germany as diplomat Cardinal Pacelli before World War II. John
XXIII was the subject of debate whether, as a chaplain sergeant in World
War I, he gave Italian troops the order to leave their trenches, “go
over the top” and attack. Fourteen-year-old Joseph Ratzinger was drafted
into the Hitler Youth near the end of World War II, something everyone
learned when he became Benedict XVI.

•The
200-plus complaints about papal coverage moved NPR ombudsman Edward
Schumacher-Matos to admit he, too, was “pope-ed out.” One listener
wondered if NPR stood for National Papal Radio? Schumacher-Matos blogged
that “NPR aired 69 stories since Pope Benedict
XVI announced his resignation Feb. 11 and Pope Francis was selected as
his successor Wednesday. That averages out to about two radio magazine
or call-in segments per day, not including the steady drumbeat of
shorter items delivered by hourly newscasts that are not transcribed. Most
of the complaints have concerned the 47 stories that aired in the four
weeks between the day after Benedict announced his resignation and the
morning before Francis was announced — a period during which there was
less major news about the subject and more ‘horse-race’ speculation
about who might be selected.”

•Of
course, there was a Cincinnati connection to the papal election: Janice
Sevre-Duszynska, a contributing writer to Article 25, Cincinnati’s
street paper dedicated to human rights, was detained by Italian police
for demonstrating at the Vatican for women’s ordination. The French news
agency, AFP, missed her connection to Article 25, identifying her only
as “an excommunicated female priest” from Lexington, Ky., and a member of
the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests. It was unclear whether
Sevre-Duszynska was arrested or removed as a distraction when cardinals
assembled to elect a new pope. AFP did not respond to CityBeat
questions about her detention. She was dressed in liturgical robes and
carrying a banner, “Women Priests are Here.” AFP quoted Sevre-Duszynska
as saying, "As the cardinals meet for their conclave to elect the new pope, women are being ordained around the world! There are already 150 female priests in the world. The people are ready for change."

•Much
as I would have loved to be back in Rome covering the election of the
pope, there was an even better assignment that kicked my envy into
overdrive. The Economist sent a reporter on 112-day road trip through
and around Africa. I once hoped to travel the mythic Cairo Road from
Capetown to Cairo. Not going to happen. The Economist’s reporter did
that and more. He found more cause for cautious optimism than is
reflected in typical stories of rebellion, massacre, poverty, disease
and stolen elections.

•Why
did Cincinnati Business Courier take down its online story about Henry
Heimlich’s attempts to save his reputation and that of his Heimlich
Maneuver? Granted, it wasn’t flattering, but it didn’t go beyond what
Curmudgeon has reported. Reporter James Ritchie forwarded my request
for an explanation and editor Rob Daumeyer responded, “Thanks for asking, but we don't have anything to add for you.”

•I
like the tabloid Enquirer. I worked on daily and weekly tabloids
overseas; it’s a familiar format. Whether readers enjoy turning pages to
find stories promoted on section covers is uncertain; with logos, ads
and visuals, there’s little else. Inside, long stories jump from page
to page to accommodate reduced page size. I hope Enquirer editors
recognize the power of the back page in each section and treat it as
prime news space. And I’m looking forward to reporters and editors
learning to produce sharp, short stories suited to tabloids; it still
reads like the old Enquirer.

•Curmudgeon
Notes on Feb. 20 shouldn’t take credit for Sen. Rand Paul’s filibuster
over Obama’s assassination by drone. However, the Kentucky Republican
echoed Curmudgeon’s anxieties whether Obama will use drones to kill
Americans in our country. To his credit, Paul’s almost 13-hour standup
routine forced an answer from prevaricating Attorney General Eric
Holder. Holder’s letter repeated and answered Paul’s question: "Does the
President have the authority to use a weaponized drone to kill an
American not engaged in combat on American soil? The answer to that
question is no.” Perfectly clear? No. Who defines combat? Deadly
confrontations with feds at Ruby Ridge, Wounded Knee, or David Koresh’s
Branch Davidian Ranch near Waco, TX?

•Enquirer’s
Cliff Peale is probing the costs of post-secondary education and how
many recent debt-burdened college grads can’t find full-time employment
requiring their costly degrees. Coincidentally, Cincinnati Business
Courier reports how local vacancies for skilled workers threaten the
region’s economy. Is the conventional wisdom — everyone must earn a BA
or more — undermining our economic security? Maybe Peale can probe high
school curricula and counseling to see if capable students are being
steered away from well-paid blue collar careers and into crippling debt
for degrees of dubious value. Maybe it’s time to interview welders,
carpenters, plumbers, electricians, auto mechanics, etc., to find out
what their ROI (Return on Investment) is.

•It’s an old problem: courtiers mistaking their privilege of emptying the king’s chamber pots for royal power. Poynter.org reports this example from the University of Maryland’s Capital News Service:

Barr
quoted Rosenzweig, saying, “I need to see your camera right now.” She
called Barr’s presence in the non-press area an “unfair advantage” over
the other members of the media (whatever that meant). Rosenzweig watched
him delete the photos, Barr said, and then she looked at Barr’s iPhone
to make sure no photos were saved there.

“I
assumed that I’d violated a protocol,” Barr told Capital News Service.
“I gave her the benefit of the doubt that she was following proper
procedures.”

J-school
Dean Lucy Dalglish complained in a letter, saying, “Rockville is not a
third-world country where police-state style media censorship is
expected.” Biden press secretary Kendra Barkoff responded with an
apology to Dalglish and Barr.

My comment: Dalglish is a lawyer. Before taking the dean’s job she was executive
director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. It’s
ironic that her student reporter didn’t know there is no “protocol” or “proper
procedures” that required him to give up his images. He should have
held on to his images and phone and told Rosenzweig to fuck off.

•Republicans
evince an unnatural fascination with our dead ambassador at the U.S.
consulate in Benghazi. Often, in their frenzy of blame, Obama critics
mistakenly call the torched facility the “Embassy.” Ignorance now
appears to be nonpartisan. Maybe repetition has warped liberal minds.
For instance, in her blog on the thedailybeast.com, Caitlin Dickson repeated the error. In Libya, our embassy is in Tripoli, the capital.

The Boston Globe’s boston.com wasn’t immune. Under
the headline, “Paul Krugman Files Chapter 13 Bankruptcy,” someone using
the nom de plume “Prudent Investor” wrote that “Paul Krugman, the king
of Keynesianism and a strong supporter of the delusion that you can
print your way out of debt, faces depression at his very own doors.
According to this report in Austria’s Format online mag, Krugman owes
$7.35 million while assets to his name came in at a very meager $33,000.
This will allow the economist and New York Times blogger to get a feel
of how the majority of Americans feel about their dreadful lives . . . “

Romenesko
says Globe editor Brian McGrory told Washington Post’s Erik Wemple,
“The (Krugman) story arrived deep within our site from a third party
vendor who partners on some finance and market pages on our site. We
never knew it was there till we heard about it from outside.” The paper,
McGrory says, did “urgent work to get it the hell down” from boston.com.
McGrory adds, “The idea that we’d have a partner on our site is
actually news to me” and the Globe plans to “address our relationship
with that vendor.”

My
comment: the editor of New England’s dominant daily has a “third party
vendor” who provides content for business pages and the editor doesn’t
know what that content is?

•Paul Krugman, who isn’t bankrupt (above), responded tongue in cheek on his New York Times blog, The Conscience of a Liberal. “OK, I’m an evil person — and my scheming has paid off. On
Friday I started hearing from friends about a fake story making the
rounds about my allegedly filing for personal bankruptcy; I even got
asked about the story by a reporter from Russian television, who was
very embarrassed when I told him it was fake. But I decided not to post
anything about it; instead, I wanted to wait and see which right-wing
media outlets would fall for the hoax. And Breitbart.com came through! Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go give a lavishly paid speech to Friends of Hamas.”

•Weekly
Standard senior writer Matt Labash’s March 18 column suggests he’d be a
great guy to meet in a bar. Here’s a sample: “ . . . there are enough
headline-hunting researchers making enough questionable discoveries
(about health) that the four shakiest words in the English language have
come to be, ‘a new study shows’.” And here’s another: “I am a
professional journalist. It’s my job to pretend to know things that I
don’t.”

Media musings from Cincinnati and beyond

• Giovanna Chirri, the veteran Vaticanista who understood
the pope’s Latin, broke the news that he’d just announced his
resignation. She works for the Italian news agency, ANSA. Her skill
recalled Ernest Sackler at Rome’s UPI bureau when I was a
photojournalist stringer during John XXIII’s papacy. Ernest truly
understood Vatican Latin well enough to turn it into flowing English;
colleagues spoke of him with awe.

• I’m grateful to the Enquirer for running a story on Sen.
Rand Paul’s response to the State of the Union Message. It wasn’t on
NPR or any other network that I could find. His Washington office did
not respond to my question of whether the Kentucky Republican offered his
remarks to any broadcasters/cable networks.

• Tens of millions of Americans will become eligible for
subsidized medical care under Obama’s Affordable Care Act. Who’s going
to treat them? I haven’t seen that in the news. And while reporters are
working out that story, ask how the required additional primary care
physicians will pay off college and medical school debts on the salaries
that will be paid to their specialties.

• And once journalists dig into the supply of physicians
to handle Medicaid expansion, I hope they’ll ask who’s going to staff
quality preschool education for every American child. Obama can be
aspirational, but we’re not talking about minimum wage diaper changers.
Early learning centers require trained pre-school educators. And while
they’re at it, reporters should ask where these new early childhood
educators will train and who’s going pick up the tab. After all, they’ll
never repay college loans on day care wages.

• Maybe I missed it in the admiring coverage of our
government killing American Islamists abroad with drone rocket attacks: What prevents Obama from killing Americans in this country with drone
strikes? None of the news stories or commentaries I’ve read or heard
addressed that point.

There would be no shortage of targets. Wouldn’t the
sheriff have loved a drone-launched missile to kill Christopher Dorner,
the rogue ex-LAPD cop? That might have spared the deputy whom Dorner
killed during the flaming finale in the San Bernardino mountains. And
what prevents our increasingly militarized police from using their own
armed drones?

Imagine what authorities could have done with armed drones during earlier, infamous encounters:

A missile fired at armed members of the American Indian
Movement at Wounded Knee, S.D., could have avenged inept, vain
and foolish George Armstrong Custer and FBI agents killed in the 1973
siege.

No feds would have died if a drone-launched missile
incinerated Randy Weaver’s family with during its deadly 1992
confrontation with feds at Ruby Ridge, Idaho.

David Koresh and the Branch Davidian religious sect were
incinerated by the feds’ 1993 armored assault in Texas. That would have
been a perfect photo op for a domestic drone attack.

• Sometimes, “national security” is the rationale for requested or commanded self-censorship, even when secrets aren’t secret.

For instance, British editors held stories about Prince
Harry until he returned the first time from Afghanistan. However, an
Australian women’s magazine reported he was in combat. The non-secret
was a secret because no one paid attention.

More recently, the new U.S. drone base in Saudi Arabia was
supposed to be a secret. Obama officials asked major news media to hold
the story and they agreed. National security, you know.

But it wasn’t a secret. Washington Post blogger Erik
Wemple said Fox News already had reported U.S. plans to build the
facility in Sept. 2011. Three months before that, the Times of
London reported construction of the Saudi drone base.

When the New York Times broke the agreement and reported
the Saudi drone base, everyone jumped on the story. Now, the Times, the
Post and AP are trying to explain why they kept the non-secret from us.

• Gone are the days when senior Israeli government
officials could call in top editors and broadcasters and tell them what
they could not report. Last week, a tsunami of technology overwhelmed
official Israeli efforts to censor the story of Prisoner X. Israeli
journalists were not to report his existence or mention the censorship
order. National security, you know. However, an Australian network named
an Aussie as Prisoner X and said he reportedly committed suicide three
years ago in an Israeli prison. Social media and the online world took
it from there: "Aussie recruited by Israeli spy agency dies in Israeli
prison." Israel dropped efforts to censor the Prisoner X story and is
issuing official statements about the case.

• San Bernardino’s sheriff asked journalists to quit
tweeting from the final gunfight with former LAPD cop Christopher
Dorner. Bizarre. If authorities feared Dorner would gain tactical
information, they misread his situation: Dorner was surrounded in a
mountain cabin, tear gas was being lobbed in and men outside were
trying to shoot him. He probably was too busy to read tweets. Moreover,
only one reporter was close enough to tweet anything remotely useful to
anyone. Most reporters initially or finally ignored the sheriff.

The tweet issue first arose during the 2008 Muslim
terrorist attack on Mumbai when invaded the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel. Some
authorities reportedly feared accomplices outside were reading news
media tweets and forwarding tactical information about police and army
movements to gunmen inside. I don’t remember if anyone asked reporters
to quit tweeting.

• A new poll says Fox hit an alltime low for the four
years Public Policy Polling has tracked trust/distrust among TV
networks: 41 percent trust Fox, 46 percent do not. The poll didn’t find anything for
other networks to brag about. Only PBS had more “trust” than “distrust”
among viewers: 52 percent trust, 29 percent don’t trust. The poll questioned 800
voters by telephone from Jan. 31 to Feb. 3.

• Garry Wills’ new book, Why Priests, sets out to debunk
Catholicism’s dearest dogmas and doctrines concerning priests, bishops
and the papacy. NPR’s Diane Rehm gave him an hour last week to say why
Catholic ordained clergy are an unnecessary accretion. Then she asked an
outgunned parish priest from the Washington, D.C. area for a rebuttal.
If she really wanted a lively, informed argument, there is no shortage
of priest-scholars who could have matched Wills’ credentials and talents
as an historian. It was unfair and cringe-worthy.

• It’s touchy when an unpleasantry is brought up in an
obit: a long forgiven conviction, a “love child,” whatever. More often,
predictably awkward moments are omitted in the spirit of de mortuis nil
nisi bonum. Here’s HuffingtonPost on a full-blown omission in the recent
obit on former New York mayor and mensch Ed Koch:

“The New York Times revised its Friday obituary
. . . after several observers noticed that it lacked any mention of his
controversial record on AIDS. The paper's obituary, written by longtime
staffer Robert D. MacFadden, weighed in at 5,500 words. Yet, in the
first version of the piece, AIDS was mentioned exactly once, in a
passing reference to ‘the scandals and the scourges of crack cocaine,
homelessness and AIDS.’ The Times also prepared a 22-minute video on
Koch's life that did not mention AIDS. This struck many as odd; after
all, Koch presided over the earliest years of AIDS, and spent many years
being targeted
by gay activists who thought he was not doing nearly enough to stop the
spread of the disease. Legendary writer and activist Larry Kramer called Koch ‘a murderer of his own people’ because the mayor was widely known as a closeted gay man.”

• New York’s Ed Koch admired Wall Street Journal reporter
Danny Pearl’s recorded last words before Muslim terrorists beheaded him.
Koch had Pearl’s affirmation of faith engraved on his own tombstone in
Manhattan’s Trinity Church graveyard: “My father is Jewish, my mother is
Jewish, I am Jewish.”

• A former student reporter rarely rates an obit in the
national media, but Annette Buchanan wasn’t ordinary. In the mid-1960s,
she refused a court order to name sources for her story about student
marijuana use on the University of Oregon campus. Her story ran in the
Oregon Daily Emerald, the campus paper. No shield law protected her
promise of confidentiality. The Emerald said she was fined the maximum
$300 and the state supreme court affirmed her contempt of court
conviction. That led to the creation of Oregon’s shield law for
journalists. She died recently.

• An unresolved First Amendment issue is whether bloggers
can be protected by state shield laws that allow journalists to keep
sources secret. The latest case is from New Jersey. Poynter.com
said blogger Tina Renna refused to identify government officials whom
she said misused county generators after Hurricane Sandy. Union County
prosecutors demanded the 16 names, saying Renna wasn’t a journalist
protected by New Jersey’s shield law because she’s been involved in
politics, her blog is biased and she’s often critical of county
government.

The Newark Star-Ledger took her side. It said shield law protection “shouldn’t
hinge on whether someone is a professional, nonpartisan or even
reliable journalist. It’s a functional test: Does Renna gather
information that’s in the public interest and publish it? Yes.” Renna “can
be a little wild, she’s not the same as a professional reporter and she
drives local officials crazy. But part of democracy is putting up with
Tina Renna.” A court will probe whether Renna is a journalist as defined
by the state shield law; that is, whether bloggers can be included by
analogy under protected electronic news media.

• Few ledes — introductory sentences in news stories — are
as lame as those saying the subject “doesn’t look” like some
stereotype. For years, it usually referred to a woman in an
unconventional (read men’s) occupation or pastime. “She didn’t look
like a steelworker . . . “ or, “You wouldn’t think a tiny blonde bagged a
deadly wild boar with a huge .44 magnum revolver.” Male subjects aren’t
immune, as in this lede from a recent Washington Post story: “Farmer
Hugh Bowman hardly looks the part of a revolutionary who stands in the
way of promising new biotech discoveries and threatens Monsanto’s
pursuit of new products . . . ”

What do revolutionaries look like? Lenin was pictured in
suit and tie. Gandhi wore a white, draped sari or dhoti, Mandela and
fellow ANC rebels often wore suits and ties. Young 1960s American and
French student rebels never wore suits and ties and needed haircuts.
Today’s young North African activists dress the same for class or a
demonstration.

“Doesn’t look like” wouldn’t even fit an androgynous male
model in the annual Victoria’s Secret fashion show. He’d be there
because he looks like a classic, young, leggy “angel.”

• Have you noticed how hurricanes, floods, blizzards and
tornadoes are morphing from evidence of climate change into photo ops?
News media see them as so common that little reporting is required
beyond images and stories of hardship: shoppers hoarding sliced white
bread, downed trees and shattered homes, marooned airline passengers and
days without power. Maybe there’s the throwaway quote from some
climatologist about change affecting weather, but for the most part,
that’s it. I’m betting this deliberate ignorance is a Republican Party
plot to show that increasingly frequent, dangerous weather reflects the
Intelligent Design that gave us dino-riding cavemen a few thousand years
ago.

• The Enquirer devoted Page 1 to a dramatic OMG! graphic
and story suggesting Cincinnati was terrible because it had no black
candidate for mayor. An accompanying list of movers and shakers had few
blacks. The presentation suggested the all-white mayoral contest meant
amiss in a city where whites are the largest minority. However, whites
and blacks told reporters that leadership rather than color was foremost
among attributes they sought in a mayor. Moreover, with so many African
Americans in visible leadership roles in the city, having a black mayor
succeed a black mayor was less of an issue than the paper suggested.